No abstract

The Lough Neagh catchment area covers about one‐third of the land area of Northern Ireland. This report documents NO2− concentrations in the major rivers entering Lough Neagh, which are frequently in the range of 100 to 150 μg N L−1 and exceed the European Community (EC) water quality guide values. The contribution of land drainage to NO2− loads carried by these rivers was estimated to be about 40%. The remaining 60% of NO2− appears to originate from N transformations at the sediment‐water interface of the river system. The available evidence suggests that NH+4 originating from agricultural pollution provides the N substrate for nitrification by Nitrosomonas to NO2−. What is anomalous is why this NO2− is not further oxidized rapidly to NO−3 by Nitrobacter. A possible mechanism is that the Nitrobacter is retarded by the presence of free ammonia concentrations that can be predicted to be present in the range of 65 to 76 μg N L−1.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

In rural areas of LatinAmerican Countries, irrigation requirements for perennial crops, like cocoa are expected to increase. This paper develops a novel holistic approach to model private investment decisions in irrigation adoption by small and mid-sized cocoa farmers that face competing sources of uncertainty. In agricultural studies data collection through surveys often leads to issues of missing information on key measured variables. Our approach deals simultaneously with the issue of endogeneity of considering diverse risk sources and with the missing values in key covariates. The study considers multiple levels of irrigation adoption in a context where traditional and modern irrigation systems might coexist.The main contributions of this paper are both its methodological approach and its empirical application filling a knowledge gap on irrigation adoption.